According to the Danish People's Party, a coalition partner of the two ruling right-wing parties of the Danish government, paying immigrants to leave Denmark will save the state money on social services and “problems” [da] in the long run. “It costs quite a lot to have maladjusted immigrants in Danish society,” said financial spokesperson of the party, Kristian Thulesen Dahl. Funds have also been set aside for campaigns by local authorities who wish to encourage immigrants to leave the country. The government have not yet calculated how many people can be expected to accept the offer.

Around 10% of the population in Denmark are immigrants or descendants of immigrants including from neighboring countries, as well as the rest of the world. The primary issue in politics and the media for the past many years has been the “integration” of Muslim and other non-western immigrants and the tension arising from a perceived clash of cultures. Danish politicians have created some of the most stringent immigration laws in all of Europe, and continue to score high for it in polls.

How much, to leave the country?

In response, a sarcastic public Facebook group [da] protesting the law has been set up to collect 100,000 kroners to pay the leader of the Danish People's Party, Pia Kjærsgård to leave the country.

The group has over 16,000 members, and the tagline says, “100,000 kr. dear friends - and maybe she'll do it”. The group creators pledge to offer any additional money collected to the minister of integration, Birthe Rønn Hornbech from the governing Liberal Party, in case she should be amenable to leaving the country as well.

The debate on the Facebook group page is heated. Some offer witty comments about who else should be kicked out of the country or what else should happen to them, while others counter that the offer from the Danish government is a generous offer and should be welcomed by immigrants who are unhappy in Denmark and would prefer to leave. One commenter disagrees with the hype, and reminds everyone that a similar policy has been in place for several years, but the amount of money on offer was only 10 times smaller.

Facebook commenter Dan Cornali Jørgensen says [da]:

Jeg har måske misforstået konceptet?
Drejer det sig ikke om et lovforslag som giver ikke-integrerbare udlændige mulighed for at sige ja-tak, til en check på 100.000 kr. mod tilsagn om frivilligt at rejse hjem til deres oprindelsesland? Umidelbart virker det storsindet og absolut humanistisk, da vi må formode at 100.000… kr. er en anseelig formue i det pågældende land, og nok til at starte en anstændig tilværelse i det land som de tilsyneladende har så stærk tilknytning til…

Pensioners must report travel of more than 2 months

Another initiative negotiated this month by Danish People's Party is a law that requires all pensioners and early retirees in Denmark [da] to report to their city government if they plan to leave Denmark for more than two months at a time. Ostensibly, the goal is to stop people “for instance, Iraqis” from receiving pension payments in Denmark while they may be collecting wages in another country at the same time. The most popular example is that of an Iraqi-Danish politician, Samia Aziz Mohammad, who was discovered to be collecting pension funds while she was earning high wages from the Iraqi parliament. She has since paid the money back [da] to the Danish government. Another pensioner was discovered by the Danish press to be earning wages from the Kurdish parliament.

Members of parliament of both the Liberal Party and the Danish People's Party have argued that the new restrictions will also cut down on holiday visits by fake refugees to their home countries, and repatriation of family members who spend too much time abroad.

The fact that all Danish pensioners wil in effect will become suspects of fraud is something the biggest association of the elderly in Denmark, DaneAge, is vocally angry [da] about. Many comments on newspaper articles [da] support the government's attempt to cut down on fraud, while others draw comparisons to East Germany (GDR) travel bans of the past.

One Danish blogger, Erik Bentzen on Dette og Hint, says [da]:

Enhver kan sige sig selv, at meldepligten ikke dæmmer op for noget som helst, da den ikke indebærer nogen form for effektiv kontrol.

Det er ren chikane og tom signalpolitik, som øger kommunernes administrative arbejde til ingen verdens nytte.

Reglen er så amøbeintelligent, at den forhåbentlig giver bagslag, næste gang pensionisterne skal til stemmeurnerne.

The course is organized by the development agency MS Action Aid Denmark (more info in Danish) and will bring together university students and professionals from Denmark, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia to build their skills in online and offline activism over three months.

Global Voices bloggers will act as virtual mentors to the students in the first six weeks of the course where they will be learning about blogging, citizen media, and online activism.

Organizing for climate justice

The final challenge for the students at the end of the course will be to develop a project related to “climate justice“.

After the first six weeks in Copenhagen, participants will conduct fieldwork in Denmark and Kenya (incidentally coinciding with the African bloggers meeting, Kelele) before returning to Copenhagen once more in time for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December.

Through personal online communication, the mentors will introduce their mentees to the wonders of blogging, and help inspire them to see possibilities for creative use of citizen media for activism. Many will also be volunteering advice about micro-blogging and other technologies.

Mentoring from South to North

Among the mentors (from left to right): Tharum, Gayle, Joe, Renata, Ismail, Elia

The 31 Global Voices mentors come from more than 20 different countries, including Venezuela, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Cambodia, Brazil, and Bangladesh. Two-thirds of the students will be from Denmark and the rest from Africa.

Alongside their involvement with Global Voices, several mentors are well-known bloggers in their own countries, and all have either extensive experience or knowledge of online organizing efforts in their own regions. We expect that pairings between - for instance - a blogger in India with a blogger from Denmark; or a blogger in Azerbaijan with a blogger from Uganda; will lead to new friendships and greater understanding of how global community can be fostered via the internet.

Developing a new model for blogger mentoring

The Global Voices mentors are developing the new mentoring program themselves through IRC chat room meetings, a shared wiki for “lesson” ideas, a Google group email list, and a Facebook group.

Mentors intend to create enough documentation that the experience could easily be repeated by Global Voices or by others in the future. In their own blogs and tweets about the project, they will be using the tag: #gvmentors and we will be sharing developments and conclusions on Global Voices too. Later on, there will also be a student website at: globalchangenow.net

If you know of similar mentoring initiatives we should look at, we'd love to hear about them in the comments.

For Global Voices, this project is a welcome source of alternative revenue. Individual mentors (who usually contribute to Global Voices on an entirely volunteer basis) will be offered modest stipends for their work as mentors, but their collective effort is also generating revenue to support the Global Voices community as a whole.

Wikipedia enthusiasts took up the fight [da] with TV2, and the ensuing public debate has centered on questions of journalistic integrity. On Twitter, it quickly became known as #TV2wikigate.

Stefan Bøgh-Andersen who manages the Danish RSS feed search engine Overskrift.dk has kept a thorough time line [da] on his blog of the Danish media, blog, and Twitter reactions to the scandal throughout the month of May. This post is based on his links.

Anders Breinholt and Cecilie Frøkjær

You can see an archived video of the program (May 13) on TV2's website. The hosts of the TV2 program Go’ Morgen Danmark, Cecilie Frøkjær and Anders Breinholt demonstrate supposedly laughable errors in the Danish Wikipedia entries for themselves, and encourage viewers not to trust what they read on the internet.

Since the “history” of all Wikipedia pages show which users make what changes, it was quickly uncovered by a Wikipedia user that the IP address of the person who created an error in Frøkjær's date of birth on May 12 matched that of the production company of the morning show.

Incidentally, the history page also shows that the error was corrected only four minutes later by another Wikipedia user.

Danish blogosphere bites back

On Bootstrapping.net, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal wrote [en]:

Yesterday the main morning news show ran a story about how anyone can edit wikipedia. They make fun of a world where everyone can participate and spread fear about how dangerous it can be.

To prove the point they humorously tried to show that they had edited the hosts’ own wikipedia entries with some prank statements. Like small bullies in kindergarten doing it on national television - f*** with our collective creation Wikipedia. Arrogance is a small word for it.

On Blog.Flugge.Net [da], Matthias Flügge Hansen magnified the Wikipedia screenshot shown on television to prove that it was not the live webpage, but probably a photo-shopped image.

Claus Dahl of Notes from Classy's Kitchen said the media must be coming up with these stories to make themselves look better. He wrote [da]: “The sub-text is of course, ‘who could possibly trust stories that are not produced by journalists?'”.

Media lies or satire?

Bloggers were even more incensed [da] when a TV2 editor, Jes Schrøder, defended the fabricated story in an interview with Journalisten.dk [da] the trade publication of the Danish Union of Journalists, on May 15.

Schrøder said the hosts were merely trying to show funny examples of what one could have written if one wanted to manipulate the text on Wikipedia. When he was pressed on whether that was an excuse for lying on television, he insisted it had been an attempt at “satire”.

Here is the apology that was eventually issued by TV2 on May 18. “We apologize for imprecisions,” says Frøkjær.

The aftermath

Danish social media company, Socialsquare, (co-founded by Madsen-Mygdal) organized a meeting on May 19 for organizations to discuss how to engage productively with online communities. Andreas Lloyd offered some practical tips [en], including “Get the facts straight” and “Show respect for culture you don’t understand”.

In Mediebloggen, Lars K Jensen wrote an analysis [da] on May 24 of what the scandal had demonstrated about the Danish blogosphere.

On the one hand, said Jensen, bloggers uncovered the story and were able to grab the attention of the press. On the other hand, they did not demonstrate the ability to take matters any further themselves. Instead they merely added their opinions to the echo chamber:

Hvem førte så historien videre? Jo, det gjorde et af de “gamle medier”: Journalisten.

Hvad var fremgangsmåden? Hvordan fik man historien videre? Jo, man greb knoglen og ringede til TV 2-redaktør Jes Schrøder. Uden at kunne sige det med 100 procent sikkerhed, så tror jeg ikke, at nogen af dem, der omtalte sagen på blogs og/eller Twitter overhovedet har forsøgt at kontakte TV 2.

Det er muligt, at det er sådan blogs “skal” være, men det flytter ikke historierne nogen vegne.

Er det en konsolidering i mediebilledet, vi ser nu? At sociale medier og græsrødder finder historierne, mens medierne kører den sikkert hjem og bringer os og selve historien videre. Jeg tror det, og det er ikke nødvendigvis noget dårligt. Selve blog-mediet er rettet mod, at folk kan lufte deres egne holdninger, synspunkter og erfaringer.

After a period of absence, AK comes back with a blog post about a deeply moving documentary called “Orphans of Mygoma” which was originally televised by Aljazeera International. It tells the story of an orphanage in Sudan and illegitimate children.

Great documentery by Aljazeera's Witness program. Please watch both parts below.

To get a decent understanding about the social stigma surrounding illegitimate children in Sudan, read this comment by optimist on AK's blog:

The Mygoma oprhanage is truly one of the saddest aspects of Sudan. I think people might overlook the fact that not only are those children starved for affection and good health care, they are also faced with the biggest challange (if they survive to face it,) which is the intese social stigma of being a born-out-of-wedlock child. The Sudanese society is decidedly biased against illigitimate children, even though such behavior is not supported by Islam.

I really do hope things will change for the orphans of Mygoma.

Next, we have DZA with something more cheerful. Apparently, YouTube's block in Sudan has been lifted.

Youtube is unblocked in Sudan now, I don't know who to thank, maybe me for starting that group :p lol .. but ey, thank god
anyways ..

Meanwhile, Path2Hope was lucky enough to be in Kenya to witness all the celebrations there after Obama was announced winner of the US elections:

It's only been a few weeks since I arrived in lovely Nairobi but it already feels like home. I am surprised the place has grown on me this fast, especially after all the security briefing madness that I had to go through before coming here…but it was all worth it.

And how lucky am I to be here when they announced Obama's win? You really should have seen and felt the amount of joy that consumed this country! It was amazing to be part of it all.

When it comes to Obama's victory, not every Sudanese is happy like Path2Hope or Black Kush though. John Akec is more cautious:

President Clinton in most part had maintained a hand-off approach to Sudan conflict. His Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright once said: “Sudan war is not viable.” During his time, Al Qaeda was founded and fared. His actions in most parts were nothing but knee-jerk reactions such as missile strike of Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in August 1998 as retaliation to bombing of two US embassies in East Africa that year. That action did nothing to promote the cause of peace and freedom in Sudan but only added fuel to the fire of anti-Americanism without serving any purpose.

With this abysmal Democratic record in view, the author fears that the coming Obama administration will be nothing but Clinton 2, courtesy of Obama.

Lastly, Drima makes a point about “the Muslim and Arab hypocrisy in regards to the Darfur conflict” in the following comic way:

Muslim minority: Hey, there are Muslims getting killed in Darfur.

Muslim majority: Really? By the evil Joooz?

Muslim minority: No, by other Muslims.

Muslim majority: …

Specifically, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association are frustrated that Google News in Denmark wants to list and link to articles of Danish newspapers without paying them royalties.

Danish blogger, Peter Svarre writes, “AAAARRRRGH!” upon reading arguments against Google News.

I don’t really know whether I am in a state of shock, despair or outright frustrated rage, but after reading an article in Politiken I just realized that the traditional Danish media or at least the editorial board of [newspaper] Berlingske Tidende seems to have understood nothing and learned nothing of the last five years development on the Internet. What seems to be common sense and ordinary street knowledge for media and advertising people in New York is apparently exotic, dangerous, and threatening lore to the established Danish Media industry.

There was a similar dispute in Belgium in 2006-7, when newspapers there took Google News to court and according to Finfacts threatened to fine them €1 million a day if they kept linking. In Denmark, there are also precedents. In 2002, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association took a Danish web company, Newsbooster, to court for emailing links to news articles to their customers. Newsbooster was forced to shut down.

Blogger Ricco Førgaard at Fiskeben.dk [Da] said in May:

Det er tydeligt, at disse såkaldte medier ikke har forstået en pind og ikke er kommet ud af 1994 endnu. De har ikke forstået, at det er trafikken på hjemmesiden, som sælger de (irriterende) reklamer, som efter sigende skal være med til at financiere nyhederne.

On Medieblogger, Lars K Jensen quotes [Da] from a recent email discussion on the mailing list of the Danish Online News Association (DONA), where the chief legal adviser from the Danish Union of Journalists, Anne Louise Schelin, responded to a question about the official rules for citation and linking.

Schelin advised, that one should never link to anything but a website's homepage, even in an email to colleagues about a specific article. The only redeeming factor would be whether a link could be considered “loyal,” she said, referring to a Danish court case between two real estate websites from 2006.

Others on the mailing list vehemently disagreed. One called it “nonsense from the fax generation”. Blog editor of Politiken newspaper, Kim Elmose published his response in his personal blog Mediehack, calling the resistance to deep linking counter productive, and pointed to the irony that most Danish journalists use Google News as a tool themselves.

Lars K Jensen asks in Medieblogger:

Tilbage sidder jeg med spørgsmålet: Hvad er et illoyalt link? Hvem definerer, hvornår et link er loyalt eller illoyalt?

Et link er vel et link?

* Photo above of Danish newspapers is by Jacob Bøtter on Flickr.